Hey everyone and welcome back to another Tuesday tip where in this video
We're gonna be talking about a very simple fast and easy way to make your BMX brakes better with just one thing
So if you watched my BMX brake check which was my last video and linked in the description
And in the corner somewhere here
I went from the front to the back on my bike talking about all of the different brake tricks that I use to make them
Better more efficient and make the cables last longer and when I got to the end of that video
I talked about something to do with the brake pads
It makes the brakes work better, but I couldn't remember the logic behind it and to be completely honest
I remembered the logic behind it and the furthest I can explain it is that it's
Leverage and what we're talking about here is using the thicker brake pad spacers in order to get more distance between
The brake arm and the rim so as you can see here
We've got two different sized spacers on either side of where the brake arm would go right here
We have the bigger spacer which would be on the inside and the thinner
Spacer which would be on the outside with this bigger spacer between the brake arm and the brake pad itself we have more
distance between the brake arm and
The rim on the bike and what this greater distance from the brake arm to the rim does is gives us more leverage
Whenever we're pulling the brakes, and this is a concept that I can vaguely understand
But couldn't completely wrap my head around so I hit up my friend Patrick Kelly who is a science teacher a science?
Youtuber and a fellow brake rider and I asked him if he'd be willing to do a collaboration and talk about this concept
Scientifically in his own way to maybe help you guys understand. What's actually going on here, so let's cut right to Patrick's explanation
How's it going everyone? I'm Patrick Brandt actually has a pretty good idea behind his little spacer trick
He's saying that the bigger spacer between
The brake arm and the rim is going to increase the performance of his brakes and this trick works because he's increasing friction and friction
Is really only two things?
coefficient of friction times the normal
Force the bigger that either of those gets the bigger the friction force and the bigger the stopping power of his brakes all right
So the coefficient of friction depends on the materials used a plastic peg on a waxed ledge is gonna
Have a low coefficient of friction rubber brake pads on a chrome rim is gonna. Have a high coefficient of friction
That's also my different brake pads come in different colors
They're different coefficient of friction for whatever your brake needs are
But the spacer is there so that he can maximize the normal force to get the greatest normal force
We need to make sure that the brake pad is hitting as
perpendicular to the rim as possible rather we need to make sure that the
Tangent of the force produced by the brake arm is hitting the rim at 90 degrees
And I'm guessing you didn't come to this video for some math so instead
Here's an analogy
If you're trying to hit a baseball as far as you can you want to make sure that that point of contact between the ball?
And the bat happens at a 90 degree direction to the pitch
You're wasting the force that you generated from the swing if you hit it here or here
It's the same concept with brakes you want the pole to hit as close to 90 degrees as possible
And that's what Brants pacer does it puts the brake pad in the position to hit the rim straight on on the flip side
The thin spacer wastes a lot of the force that you created even if you towed your brake pad
Perfectly to be completely parallel with the rim
It's still coming in at a little bit more of an angle the farther you get from perfect
The more energy is going in that direction instead of directly in to stopping the rim
Well that might not be a ton of force
That's conserved
Everything in Brants bike seems optimized for braking power and this works
If you all have any other BMX science related questions make sure to let us know in the comments section if you're interested you can
Look at my youtube channel right here put the address right there
And otherwise, thank you Brandt for having me in your video take care
Okay, so first of all Thank You Patrick for putting that together for me second of all
I hope that this helped you
Understand the concept of what's going on whenever there's more distance between the brake arm and the rim the baseball
Analogy really brings it together
But if it still went over your head a little bit
basically what Patrick is saying is that with the thinner spacers between your brake arm and your brake pad and
The less distance between your brake arm and your rim that comes with these thinner
Spacers your brake arms are already part of the way closed therefore giving you less leverage from pull the brake
Lever which in turn means less force put onto the rim and less friction between the brake pad and the rim
Itself and in the end this gives you a less efficient brake pull and makes you pull the brake lever
Harder than you would have to if you had a bigger
spacer between your brake pad in the rim giving you a bigger distance between your rim and your brake arm and
Similarly to what patrick said toward the end of his segment this isn't something that's been measured
This is based on
years and years of using brakes and
Trying different things and just seeing what works best and the way I look at this is that I noticed a difference
And I know a few other people who have noticed a difference so whether or not that difference is
negligible really doesn't matter to me because
when it comes down to it the difference between a
skinny and thicker brake pad spacer between the brake arm in the brake pad has
Absolutely no effect on the rest of the bike other than the length of brake cable inner
That is needed and it's really not that big of a difference between the two
so there's really no reason not to have things set up in a way that makes sense to make the brakes work better when it
Doesn't affect anything else on the bike one other thing that has to do with this
Concept and something that I've ran into in the past is something that we've already mentioned in that with the thinner brake pads
Spacers our brake arms are already closed up a little bit and because of this the points of contact between
The brake cables and the brake arms or the straddle cable in the brake arms are
Closer together and on some sets of brakes this gives us less
Playroom and less wiggle room to actually pull the brakes and have clearance between the two brake arms
I know with a previous set of brakes that I had the brake arms were too close together and it left almost
No wiggle room and the brakes had to be set up
Absolutely perfectly as far as spring tension goes and length of the cables from where the NARC
Sits on the brake cable and where the brake arm is opened at because whenever the brakes were pulled the brake arms would
Actually rub each other and whenever they would come back
they wouldn't be able to come back smoothly because they would hit now this isn't an issue with all brakes for example the
Demolition breaks on this bike here the brake arms are designed. So they can't hit
Whatsoever but it's something to keep in mind because with brake arms that are already partially
Closed in less wiggle room we have another thing to worry about and another thing that could potentially
Go wrong and make our brakes more complicated that we can avoid just by using thicker brake pad spacers between
The brake arm and the brake pad with that being said I hope that you learned something today and found this video useful
I want to end the video by saying thank you again to Patrick Kelly for being
involved putting the time and effort necessary in to make this
Educational video about bikes for you guys to hopefully help teach you
something and give you something to try on your bikes if you have brakes on them if you don't and you made it to the
End of this video, thank you for watching. Thank you for watching anyways check out Patrick's Channel
He has a lot of really great educational videos
They're not BMX related
But they're entertaining and they have the same style from the video that you saw today in them not to mention the fact that
Patrick is a very great bike rider and a fellow lip Lord
I want to thank you again for watching, and we'll see you in the next one goodbye
You